Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage. It takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and compose, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and solace in this labor of love, please consider becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good lunch. Your support really matters.

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Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity, children's books, and other strands of our search for truth, beauty, and meaning. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:

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Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:

PICKED: Exit Through the Gift Shop Giveaway

By Maria Popova

British street artist Banksy has been vilified and glorified, reviled and revered, but one thing remains as unshakeable as his spray-can-slinging bravado: He’s a true cultural icon. Nowhere do both his genius and his penchant for controversy shine more brightly than in Exit Through the Gift Shop, the groundbreaking documentary about the elusive graffiti master and compelling larger commentary about the role of street art in contemporary culture, its oft-questioned commodification, and the even higher-order question of what constitutes talent in any art. The film swept the indie film and left audiences with eyes wide open as they took a rare look of a reclusive underground world and eyebrows raised high as they spun wild conspiracy theories about the film. (We need not say anything further — if you’ve seen it, you know what we’re talking about, and if you haven’t, anything we say would be a spoiler, that’s how good it is.)

Today is the day, that much-anticipated day that Exit Through the Gift Shop is released on DVD and Blu-ray. But wait, here’s the oh-so-special part: We’re giving away 10 copies of the DVD — complete with exclusive artwork, deleted scenes and even a “lawyer’s edit” — to Brain Pickings readers, courtesy of Wooster Collective.

To snag one, just sign up for our free weekly newsletter if you haven’t already and leave a comment below telling us what your favorite Banksy piece is. On Friday (12/17), we’ll use a random number generator to select the 10 lucky winners to walk away with a copy of the year’s most daring independent film.

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Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage. It takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and compose, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and solace in this labor of love, please consider becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good lunch. Your support really matters.

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Sunday newsletter

Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity, children's books, and other strands of our search for truth, beauty, and meaning. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:

midweek newsletter

Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:

www.brainpickings.org

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